Bethlehem family talks to Katie Couric, joins other families, advocates

Updated 9:19 am, Wednesday, February 27, 2013

BETHLEHEM — A local mother and her transgender teenage son were among three families featured on Katie Couric's national TV talk show, "Katie," on Tuesday.

The segment, "Trapped in the Wrong Body: Growing up Transgender," aired on the local ABC affiliate, NEWS10 ABC.

"It was a great experience. Katie was awesome," said Mary Moss of Delmar, who works for the State Education Department. Her 14-year-old son, Christopher, is transitioning from female to male and has cut his hair short, presents himself as a boy and is accepted as Chris by family and friends.

ABC put Moss and her son up in a Manhattan hotel overnight and they taped the show last Thursday in the ABC studios. They spoke with the other families and met the guests: LGBT activist and writer Andrew Solomon, author of "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity" and Renee Richards, the former professional tennis player who underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1975. Richards was banned from the 1976 U.S. Open by tennis officials and took her fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in her favor in 1977 in a landmark case for transgender rights.

"The message of the show was that we all need to learn to accept our children for who they are, and to love them unconditionally," Moss said. "We also want to show other parents of transgender kids that they're not alone."

Moss and her son and their hometown were not explicitly identified on the broadcast at the request of Moss, who strongly guards her son's privacy. Her son has not spoken publicly in this area because he fears being ostracized and bullied. He spoke to Couric of being teased by his peers and experiencing early on a pervasive feeling of gender discordance — when gender identity and biological sex conflict — that he could not articulate at the time.

Chris was born a girl and named Grace, but his mother recalled that as early as age 8 she told Moss that she did not feel right in the body she was born with and wanted surgery to become a boy.

Her son told the TV host that he hopes to begin hormone replacement therapy and eventually to undergo chest reconstruction surgery, known as "top surgery."

Moss's son agreed to share his story on "Katie" as a way to thank the staff at a summer camp in New England for transgender kids. He plans to return to the camp for the third time this summer. Camp founder Nick Teich, a social worker, also appeared on the show.

"Nobody bullies Chris at the camp, he feels comfortable being himself and people always use the right pronoun," Moss said.

Moss is taking her advocacy to the next level. She is a co-founder of a new group, New York Citizens for Transgender Rights. She set up a Facebook page.

The group's main goal is to pass a transgender civil rights bill, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, or GENDA, in New York

The bill has passed the Assembly five times and died in the Senate each year. The cities of Albany, Buffalo, Ithaca, Binghamton, New York City and Rochester, as well as Tompkins and Suffolk counties, have enacted local versions of GENDA. Sixteen states, Washington, D.C., and more than 140 localities nationwide have passed GENDA legislation.

A 2009 national survey that included 531 transgender people in New York found 74 percent reported harassment or mistreatment on the job and 20 percent lost a job or were denied a promotion.

GENDA advocates have been encouraged by a string of victories for transgender people, including a federal legal precedent prohibiting workplace discrimination last year.